Chapter 301

While Geralt was heavily invested in the monitor with the three students still in the running for a Perfect Clear, Yennifer turned her attention towards the monitor with Benny and Selene. They had just spawned together and were standing silently while staring at each other in confusion.

—

“Um, why are you here?” Selene asked as she tilted her head to the side and planted her tower shield on the ground.

“I could ask you the same thing. Hm, this room is bigger.” Unconcerned by the appearance of his teammate, Benny glanced around the room and took in his surroundings.

“About twice as big, plus there are more pillars. Hey, hey, look, Benny, look, the fire is purple, think that’s important?” Pouting because Benny was ignoring her, Selene tried adding to the conversation by pointing animatedly at the torches on a nearby pillar, only to receive a curt nod in response, making her puff her cheeks harder.

“Calm down, this is the final Floor, and for some reason, we’re together instead of with the others.” Noticing the lack of Gabby, Cynrik, and Brance, Benny’s mind spun until he realized that the two of them were the only ones who didn’t complete a Perfect clear.

“Ah, yeah, where is my hubby. I haven’t been able to talk to him since we entered.” Biting on her bottom lip, Selene tried countless times to reach out to either Cynrik or Brance in the mind link but received the same static feedback as she had many times before.

Due to Yennifer’s enacting a time differential on the separate realms, Selene and the brothers were unaware that Selene had been removed from the range of the mind link. Therefore, she could not use it to contact them. In contrast, because Cynrik and Brance’s realms had previously been parallel to each other and were in the same time ratio, it still worked for them.

“Hm, Teacher Yennifer, we are ready to begin. Could you please start up the event?” Looking toward the storm of particles floating near the 40-meter-high ceiling, Benny bowed respectfully and asked.

“Teacher? Huh, it seems I missed something pretty important. Oi, Benny, why are you calling the AI “teacher” now?” Selene began pestering Benny by lightly slapping him on the shoulder, but several notification windows lit up in her eyes instead of receiving an answer from the boy.

|Welcome to Floor Twenty-Two, The Final Floor of the First Obelisk. As challengers who are above Tier-1, the common challenge no longer applies, and the difficulty for the final Floor has increased to reflect your Strengths.|

|Under consideration of both the Headmaster and the Obelisk AI Yennifer, a decision has been made to create a custom challenge for Students Benjamin Sanford and Selene Nilsson.|

|The Challenge this time is a Duo Endurance Battle.|

|You will participate in an endurance battle lasting precisely 6 hours. During this Endurance Battle, a point will be added to the counter hanging in the center of the room each time you kill one of the Virtual Creatures. The enemies will come in waves of either 10, 20, or 30 at a time, and each new wave will begin within 5 minutes of the total number of creatures falling to 40% of the Initial headcount. There is no limit to how many Virtual Creatures can be generated. Each challenger MUST eliminate a minimum of 150 to advance to the Victory Floor, where you will have your awards distributed for completing the Obelisk.|

|If an entire wave is cleared before the next spawn has begun, it will instantly be triggered without pause, and the respawn timer will drop progressively, reflecting the time difference between the wave clear and spawn.|

|All Waves will have opponents at Peak Tier-1, with a select number at Early Tier-2. There will be 1 Tier-2 in the ten enemy waves, 2 Tier-2s in the 20 enemy waves, and 3 Tier-2s in the 30 enemy waves.|

|Five Virtual creatures will be generated to start.|

|If any team member(s) does not defeat the proper amount of Creatures within the allotted time or their HP falls to Zero, both challengers will be removed from the Obelisk and will be considered to have failed the final Floor. |

|Special Rewards Drops will be available at the following Point check marks, 25, 50, 75, 100, 250, 500, and 1000. The rewards will spawn in your Obelisk Inventory and will be readily available.|

|The 6 Hour Timer has been set on a digital display clock positioned in the direct center of the room, hanging from the ceiling.|

|The Score Board Counter has been placed to the left of the timer.|

|You will be given three minutes to prepare, and the Obelisk Marketplace will temporarily open for both Challengers to purchase any last-minute supplies.|

“Fuck…” Scanning through the notification contents, Benny cursed and immediately pulled up his Obelisk Inventory to check his supplies.

“Damn it, what kind of trial is this? It’s a straight-up massacre marathon!” Tossing her shield and spear into her inventory, Selene opened the Marketplace and began buying Stamina, Health, and Mana potions.

“Benny, how are you looking on potions?” Selene asked as she wrapped up buying some and checking through shields and swords for extra weapons.

“I picked up some before the last Floor, but if we have a quarter-day challenge, I need some more. I recommend burning whatever OKP you have on potions. There is no telling what these Random Rewards are, but I have a hunch, due to how it’s worded, that it will be some kind of weapon or something usable in combat.”

“We should clear out what little points we have on Stam and Mana pots, especially you, since you have your Healing Skill. I will need a couple of Health pots, however.” Swiping away from his inventory, Benny opened the Marketplace and began burning all of his points on the three potion types, ignoring any of the effect potions like the fire or ice ones Cynrik had looked at previously.

“Got it, I was going to look for backup weapons, but worse case, we both have life-saving skills and can stay on the move, so potions are a better option.” Selene nodded as she spoke and spent all her points grabbing as many potions as possible, but when she finished and looked at her total, she couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t enough.

“Benny, are you sure we can handle fighting for 6 hours with less than 10 of every potion type? Like, what is our strategy here?” She asked with a hesitant expression.

Her eyes widened slightly as she observed the boy using his Estoc to scratch into the soft stone surface of one of the pillars and carve out a series of numbers.

Walking up beside him and examining the formulas, Selene couldn’t help but smile as she noticed a similar expression on Benny’s face to the one Cynrik had when he was working through a complex formula or plan. Knowing he was busy planning something and not wanting to interrupt, Selene spent the next couple of minutes double-checking her equipment.

Between her previous climb and this current one, she had obtained a set of lightweight, Tier-1.5 Iron scalemail armor, a large Tier-1.5 Rounded lightweight yet durable oval shield that, if appropriately held, covered her entire arm from shoulder to beyond her hand. Even though it was significantly smaller than Brance’s, it offered just as much defense as his former CS-Tears.

Selene scanned through the four spears and compared their durability before selecting the strongest one and adding it to her loadout along with the shield and scalemail.

Nodding contently, Selene swapped to that loadout and was suddenly armed to the teeth and ready for battle. Looking over the form-fitting armor, Selene smirked and wished Cynrik could see her since she knew it would unlock some hidden fetishes he had yet to experience and felt rueful that she couldn’t use her Watcet to snap a picture.

When the virtual avatars were generated, one item was missing from their wrists: the Watcet. Since it would be useless anyway, nobody could use one within the Obelisk.

|The Floor Twenty-Two Challenge begins in one minute. The Race for the opponents has been chosen.|

|All opponents will be of the same Race but from different regional areas of Vinestra. There will be a wide variety of different cultures, Affinity users, and Classes on showcase, and they will be randomly chosen.|

The notification roused Benny from his math. As he exhaled loudly, he switched to his loadout, one with his Aspis, holster, and a long sheath for his Estoc underneath on his back, as well as lightweight but flexible Iron armor similar to Selene’s.

“Selene, come here, please,” Benny said in a clear tone as he walked around the side of the pillar and found an open space to write.

Briskly jogging over, Selene kept quiet and waited for the plan the younger boy had spent most of the break working on.

“Alright, we have to survive for a total of 6 hours, with a revolving door of enemies. We have three main points that need to be constantly adjusted and micro-managed if we want to come out victorious. The first is our Resource stats. With only a limited amount of potions, I have set a hard cap, meaning we shouldn’t allow our HP, MP, or STAM to fall below 70% at any time except the final sprint (last few minutes).”

“The potions all have a static 15% recovery, and so long as we can get back up to 85% and our skills aren’t on cooldown, we should be able to activate them when the need arises.”

“The second point is our Skills. Do not waste them. Each of our trump cards carries a heavy cooldown and cost; using them at the wrong time will leave us vulnerable and in a position where we will be forced to blow through our potions too quickly.”

As he spoke about the first two points, Benny carved a basic map of the 100x100x40 meter room, and once he finished, he put an X on the spot they first spawned and a circle in the approximate center of the room. One thing he noticed was that no matter what Floor he was on, the Virtual creatures always spawned directly in the center, so he built the plan around that information using that as a basis.

“The final point is the creatures themselves. We have no way of knowing what we are facing until the notification comes through, but their size will determine which of the two plans I’ve come up with we will use.” Next, Benny walked around to another open space on the same pillar.

“Plan A: will only be used if they are creatures bigger than us by a significant margin, like Nagas, Ogres, Orcs, or hell, even dragons. If they are too big, we must be explicitly careful about how many we allow in the room at any given time. I don’t expect it to take very long for us to kill them, but with multiple enemies, things can get out of hand quickly. As such, we will resort to hit-and-run tactics and laying traps by destroying pillars for obstacles.”

“Ok. Got it, and Plan B? Hehe.” Selene giggled as she thought of a dirty joke, but Benny ignored it.

“Well, Plan B only gets used if we face humanoid creatures that are the same size or smaller than us. At that point, we go crazy but keep alive enough to manipulate the timer. Remember we have six hours. That is a long time to fight, so our opponents will still be fresh, although we continuously get tired.”

|Now spawning the Five Starting opponents, Chosen Race: Demonoid.|

“Welp looks like it’s Plan B, Afterall.” Selene smiled and drew her weapons before smashing the pillar with all of Benny’s work written on it so that the enemy couldn’t see their plans.

|The timer will now begin counting down; you have 6 Hours. Good luck, Challengers.|

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